Hours
by pawpad
Summary: A few thoughts in the middle of the night. Talks regarding A Coffin for Starsky and The Plague. Light Slash


Hours

"_Oh my darling, you can't leave me this way" Barry sobbed, his tears dripping on to his lover's hair as he held tightly to her shivering body._

"_It's all right, my love," Mary whispered "There's no pain now" Her shaking voice and heaving chest spoke differently. _

"_I love you and I'll always keep you in my heart" Barry touched her lips with his own and took in a deep lungful of her scent. She still smelt of exotic herbal shampoos despite the sweat and blood that ran down her chin. _

"_I…love you…too" Mary managed to choke out, right before her body went completely limp. Her eyes didn't close, allowing death to stare out at Barry. He closed them with shaking hands before what left of his resolve was gone and he broke down crying with his lover in his arms. They stayed that way for what Barry hoped would be an eternity. _

Starsky closed the manuscript and placed it on the beside table. Instead of turning off the light he stayed for a few moments, sat up in bed thinking back over what he had just read. He picked up the front page and glanced over at his sleeping companion.

"Hey, Hutch," Starsky whispered, giving his partner a little nudge. All he got in return was a grunt. "Hey, wake up" He gave Hutch a harder nudge, one his partner couldn't ignore.

"What?" he mumbled. "I'm sleeping"

Starsky didn't stop his nudging until Hutch was forced to turn over and push Starsky away from him.

"Have you read that story Huggy gave us?" he asked. Hutch sat up a little, but kept his eyes closed.

"Not yet"

"Well, it's about this guy who falls in love with this waitress and he takes her all around the world, since she's barely been out of her small town. Anyway in one country, they don't know which, she contracts some weird disease and he takes her back around the world to find a cure, but he only has 72 hours in which to do it in before she dies"

Hutch opened his eyes, but remained still.

"Does she die?" he asked.

"Well, that would be spoiling it, but even though the dialogue is a little cheesy in parts, it got me thinking."

Hutch groaned. "Should I get the aspirin?"

Starsky ignored his partner and went about flipping though the first few pages.

"It got me thinking about a few years ago, you know when you had the plague?"

Hutch didn't like where this was going, but he nodded.

"Well, it occurred to me, this guy had 72 hours in which to find a cure and that's a long time for him to be searching and for her to be suffering, but it did give him a lot of time to search."

Hutch sat up straight in bed, wiping any sleep he had in his eye. "Where's this going?"

"Well, like I said I was remembering that you only had 48 hours to live, but I only had that much time to search." A sudden wave of emotions accompanied the long suppressed memories, but he forced himself to finish.

"Anyway I was just wondering which would have been better. Having lots of time to search, but lots of suffering or little time to search and not so much suffering."

Hutch leaned in against Starsky and wrapped his arms around his lover, giving a little comfort that he knew Starsky needed at that moment.

"Well, that's a tough question, but I can tell you that those 48 hours were lousy and I would never want to repeat them. However, remember the time you got poisoned and only had 24 hours. Nearer the end I would have done anything to have more time. You never realise how fast 24 hours goes by until that's all you have left."

"Well, personally I couldn't stand another minute." Starsky wrapped his own body around his partner and pulled him down, so they were both lying flat, snuggled in each others arms.

"Same here. 48 hours was way too long; 24 hours would have done me fine."

"Yeah, but you'd have died, I needed those extra hours. I would have been happier with 48 hours; we wouldn't have had to run around like a pair of fruit cakes."

Hutch grunted.

"At least you got the chance to take part in the investigation, I was forced to stay in that isolation room, and it drove me nuts"

Starsky snuggled his head into the pillow.

"On reflection I would have loved some extra time to lie around in bed, I was exhausted. All those bloody stairs I had to climb, not to mention having to act tough while my internal organs were playing tug of war with my guts."

Hutch planted a kiss on Starsky's forehead before snuggled down with him on the same pillow. "In the future, I'll get poisoned and you can catch the plague."

Starsky chuckled and gave his partner a kiss on the lips.

"It's a deal."

The End


End file.
